The STARDOM founder is set to start a new promotion soon.
On February 5th, STARDOM and Bushiroad announced that STARDOM founder and executive producer Rossy Ogawa’s contract had been terminated with immediate effect due to talent and staff allegedly being poached. Following this, Ogawa confirmed his intention to start a new promotion during an interview with Tokyo Sports, and we now have additional information on who’ll be backing the company financially.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter is now reporting that Ogawa is set to back his new promotion financially himself, with the STARDOM’s former executive producer being a multimillionaire due to the company’s sale to Bushiroad in 2019.
“Ogawa will be the financial backer of the new group and he is a multimillionaire due to the original sale of Stardom. It’s said they have no need for a rich backer because it’s not about competing with Stardom but just running a company where he’s in charge. The potential of working with WWE is of course there, but many of the WWE rumors got out of control.”
-WON
Immediately following Ogawa’s contract termination, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful noted that he’d heard rumours of Ogawa potentially heading to WWE, although Meltzer quickly denied these rumours. However, as the above quote mentions, Ogawa’s new promotion working with WWE is a possibility, and thus, it’ll be interesting to see whether anything comes of it when the new promotion comes to fruition.
As for the reasoning behind Ogawa’s decision to leave, with it being stated by the man himself that he’d informed Bushiroad of his decision to do so in November, Meltzer added that whilst the idea that Bushiroad were constantly overruling his booking is a misconception, there were enough instances for Ogawa to no longer desired to work with the promotion.
“There is a misconception coming out of this that Harada and Bushiroad were constantly overruling Ogawa. That’s not the case. But there were enough incidents where they did that made him not want to stay.”
-WON
At the time of writing, it’s currently unclear as to who or how many STARDOM talents are expected to follow Ogawa to the new promotion, although multiple reports have noted that several wrestlers have already indicated their desire to do so.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on the future of STARDOM and Rossy Ogawa’s new promotion as soon as we hear more.
